WASHINGTON – Iran’s president implicates U.S. intelligence in the plotting of 9/11 and asks whether Jesus would approve of President Bush in his rambling, ranting letter made public yesterday.

“Reportedly your government employs extensive security, protection and intelligence systems – and even hunts its opponents abroad,” wrote Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“September 11 was not a simple operation. Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services – or their extensive infiltration?”

The wild ramblings are little more than a ham-handed attempt to buy time as the United States steps up its effort to shut down Iran’s nuclear program, officials said yesterday.

They portrayed the bizarre document – the first diplomatic communication from Tehran since 1979 – as a stalling tactic in the contentious negotiations among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council over Iran’s nuclear program.

“The letter appears to be more about trying to change the subject,” said White House press secretary Scott McClellan, traveling in Florida with Bush.

The 18-page letter gives a rare insight into a man who has largely been a mystery to the West, showing him as fixated on a long list of sometimes absurd grievances against the United States – and making references to Jesus and other religious figures.

“I have been told that Your Excellency follows the teachings of Jesus (Peace be upon him) and believes in the divine promise of the rule of the righteous on Earth,” Ahmadinejad wrote Bush, who has said that Christ is his favorite philosopher.

“If Prophet Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ishmael, Joseph, or Jesus Christ (Peace be upon him) were with us today, how would they have judged such behavior?” – referring to U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The Iranian leader also blasts Bush for U.S. support of Israel, saying there’s no justification for the Jewish state’s existence, and blames the nation for challenges to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

That’s the only vague mention of Iran’s aggressive nuclear program in the letter at a time when the United States and its allies are seeking to stop Iran before it gets nuclear weapons.

“This letter is not the place that one would find an opening to engage on the nuclear issue or anything of the sort,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Associated Press.

The letter – given front-page coverage in Iran’s newspapers – claims to be the “words and opinions of the Iranian nation” toward finding “a way out of the problems” facing humanity.

Ahmadinejad’s letter sounds as if “it’s purely to cover his butt domestically – he made an offer, it was refused, what else can he do?” said Lexington Institute analyst Dan Goure.

The Iranian president does say that Saddam Hussein – who fought a bloody war against Iran – “was a murderous dictator” and “the people of the region are happy” that he got overthrown.

But he blasts Bush for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and says the war left U.S. soldiers “stained with the blood of others.”

“Lies were told in the Iraqi matter. What was the result? I have no doubt that telling lies is reprehensible in any culture and you do not like to be lied to,” the Iranian president writes.

At a time when Bush is pressing for the spread of democracy across the world and into Iran, Ahmadinejad contends that democracy is a failure and the answer is to yield to “the will of God.”

Ahmadinejad has threatened to “wipe Israel off the face of the map,” fueling worries about what Iran would do if it had nuclear weapons.

In the past, he has denied the Holocaust ever took place. In the letter, he claims there is no justification for the creation of Israel, even if 6 million Jews were killed.

Nut’s note

ON 9/11:

“Sept. 11 was not a simple operation . . . Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And why aren’t those responsible . . . identified and put on trial?”

ON REPORTS OF SECRET PRISONS FOR TERRORISTS:

“I fail to understand how such actions correspond to the values outlined in . . . the teachings of Jesus Christ, human rights and liberal values.”

ON ISRAEL: “Students are saying that 60 years ago, such a country did not exist. They show old documents and globes and say, try as we have, we have not been able to find a country named Israel.”

ON LIBERALISM AND DEMOCRACY:

“Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic system.”

ON SADDAM HUSSEIN:

“Of course, Saddam was a murderous dictator. . . . I point out that throughout the many years of the . . . war on Iran, Saddam was supported by the West.”

ON IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM:

“Why is it that any technological and scientific achievement reached in the Middle East region is translated

into and portrayed as a threat to the Zionist regime? Is not scientific R&D one of the basic rights of nations?”